Submitted by Adam on
Image by David Nagy from Pixabay
Staying foucused -
It helps to break it down and focus just on what the next step is. Big wars are won via little battles. Each little battle won provides a reward that motivates one on to the next step. Getting absolutely nowhere for seven years is different from unlocking it piece by piece over that time and each time getting rewarded a little bit.
It also helps to have confidence and knowing… rather than just having blind faith… by already having proof, glimpse, seed, insight, etc. that shows you a promise of what the end holds. The future must pull, rather than the past pushing.
Dinking around with a keyboard trying to compose something from scratch, having faith that the great melodies will come, never works for me. First the idea must strike me like lightning on its own at other times, or a bit like catching a faint whiff in the air and then digging deep to retrieve the memory of which it reminds you — then the idea is so awesome that it begs to be expressed in recorded format, and so this maddening itch to make it manifest is what motivates the arduous recording process.
I already know what I want, I already know the melody is great, I already know the end result will be worth moving toward. The labor is in implementing, rather than conceiving. Conception must strike as a revelation, and it must come first. The same goes for the articles on my site.
Of course when an obstacle is encountered along the way, then yes there is some labor toward getting past it, but the same way you can hear people talking on the other side of a thin wall, even if you can’t see them or make it out clearly, you can intuit that the answer is there beyond the obstacle, and you might even feel its general shape. That’s the proof/seed/glimpse needed to motivate. Again, it’s not purely blind faith and bumbling, nor is it 100% clear vision with a deterministic implementation of known steps. It’s a transcendent intuition acting as a tractor beam pulling you toward its physical manifestation, a strange attractor.
As long you can fire yourself up, keep your eye/heart on the feeling and motivation that enthuses you about the project, then the more you’re fired up by it, the more you will automatically focus on it and make it happen. If you just have no motivation and no heart and just want to make an album because that’s what’s expected of you, then you’ve already lost and everyone with ears to hear will know that you had no mojo in making it, so no point in even trying.
Like I said, if a song recording process is just flowing then I’ll give up other things because I’m too wrapped up in it to care about those other things. That’s what I meant by obsession being a key to making breakthroughs.
Controlled madness is the key to genius.
Tom Montalk